Chokecherry Festival

At seven in the morning on the first Saturday after Labor Day, the Lewistown Kiwanis Club sets out an outdoor pancake breakfast at Main Street and Second Avenue. It serves pancakes, bacon and sausage with chokecherry syrup. “They’ll have chokecherry syrup homemade right here in Lewistown,” said Theron LaFountain, executive director of the Lewistown Area Chamber of Commerce, before the 2026 festival. “All of the proceeds that morning that are made at the pancake breakfast go to the Kiwanis here.” At nine the Chokecherry Run, which benefits Pack the Place in Pink, starts its 5K run, 5K walk and 10K, and the one-mile runs follow at ten. By then the city has closed Main Street to traffic from First Avenue through the courthouse area, and the booths stay open from eight until five.

The Chamber runs the festival in downtown Lewistown, which sits at the geographic center of Montana. The 2026 edition, on September 12, was the 37th annual. LaFountain called it “a huge part of who we are” and “probably one of the largest festivals in Montana.” The festival’s own site puts attendance at more than 5,000. LaFountain expected roughly 10,000 for 2026.

The vendor map, block by block

The Chamber’s 2026 map laid out 366 spaces along a Main Street 58 feet from curb to curb. Every booth was ten feet by ten, and the center lane was kept clear for emergency vehicles. Booths ran from the 100 block through the 600 block. First and Fourth avenues stayed empty as fire lanes. On Second, Third, Fifth and Sixth avenues, each side street was split across its width, with a featured attraction on one half and a live street performance on the other. The attractions were a Montana Department of Commerce giveaway on Second, putt-putt golf on Third, a dunking booth on Fifth, and the Rolling Rivers trailer of the Fergus Conservation District on Sixth. The performers were buskers the Chamber announced by name beforehand: Birdie Smythe, Logan Smith, Mallory Morgan, Gravity Check, Roadside Attraction, The Chokecherry Ramblers and The Lewistown Hoppers, among others. A large stage stood on the north side of Seventh Avenue. The 700 block held no booths, only the Central Montana Trail Dusters car show, about 70 vehicles parked at the end of the closed street. Shuttles called at nine stops between noon and two.

The booth list reads like an inventory of the county. Yellowstone Fur and Bone took eight spaces in the 100 block, and Cloud Dancer Alpacas took three in the 200. The list also held Smoking Bull BBQ, UFU Burgers Lumpia, Tup tim thai, La Tinga Billings, Gallatin River Honey, King Colony Produce, Brockels Chocolates, Montana Cowboy Poetry, VFW Post 1703, the Fergus High School Sapphire Choir, two quilt shops, a knife maker and a chokecherry lemonade stand. At booth 331 the Chamber sold its own shirts, one reading “Sweet. Tart. Slightly Unhinged.” and another “I Got Choked.”

KRTV, reporting from one festival day, found vendors selling “everything, from fur hats to jambalaya to chokecherry mead and cigar box guitars,” with children performing and having their faces painted. Bill Dengel, there with his 1962 Pontiac, said: “It’s kind of one of them get togethers where you come a lot of times just to see some people that you haven’t seen all year.” Jennifer Keller ran one of several chokecherry lemonade stands. “It’s our family get together every year,” she said, “And we just sell out every year, so it’s a good little money maker for everybody, gets a little bonus at the end of the weekend and we get some family time.”

The 2026 festival added a youth scavenger hunt. Children picked up a lanyard, a badge and a first clue at the Chamber booth. Six clues sent them to local businesses, and each stop gave them a mystery prize. Those who collected all six were entered in a raffle for four tickets to the North Pole Adventure Train, a bicycle from True Value, and an ice cream cake from Main Street Treats. “These little prizes aren’t just cheap prizes,” LaFountain said. “They are really cool prizes.” LaFountain had expected more than 370 vendors. Afterward the Chamber counted over 350, “more than ever before.”

Eighteen ways to cook a bitter fruit

The chokecherry is a small, maroon fruit that grows wild in Montana. The bushes bloom in June and the fruit ripens in August. The Lewistown News-Argus notes that it belongs to the rose family and has been harvested for thousands of years, and that a number of Native American tribes valued the plant for its astringent properties and its effect on the respiratory system. Camped on the Upper Missouri, Captain Lewis made tea from chokecherry twigs after a bout of abdominal cramps and fever, and recorded that he felt well the next day. The name comes from the bitterness. As the Enjoy Lewistown site puts it, “Even in its ripe condition, sugar must be added for any chokecherry dish to be palatable.”

The Lewistown Art Center tests what that sugar can do. Its culinary contest has 18 categories: appetizer, sauce or salad dressing, main dish, jelly and jam, syrup, cake, cupcakes, cookies, pie, other desserts, yeast breads, quick breads, beverages with and without alcohol, non-food products and crafts, miscellaneous, a youth division for cooks 12 and under, and commercial products. Entries come in between eight and ten on festival morning, and judging starts at ten. The public may sample at noon. Every entry except commercial products must come with its recipe, and the Art Center keeps them. It sells a cookbook of “a little over 150 recipes” from past contests. LaFountain’s own favorite is a locally made chokecherry-jalapeño jam, which he serves over baked brie. “People from the community can bring in different category culinary articles, so cookies, cakes, candies, beverages, jellies, and jams,” said Nolee Anderson-Hendren, one of the contest’s judges. In 2026 she also ran the two booths of The Carpenter’s Luncheonette in the 100 block.

The winners from September 7, 2024, judged by Cody Burch, Kassia Madrid, Annie Dunnington and Angel Bell, show the range. Mary Callahan Baumstark took Best in Show with a Chokecherry Mule. Jerry Carpenter won Best Presentation with Choke Trail Cookies. Josh Wright won Main Dish with a Getting’ Porky Chokecherry Burrito, and Reilly Neill won Appetizer with Chokecherry Roast Beef and Onion Pinwheels. Linda Stiff won Syrup, and also Miscellaneous with Chokecherry Beet Pickles. Mary Kraus won with a chocolate mousse under chokecherry sauce, and Ruby Sullivan took the youth division with Chokecherry & Blackberry Ice Cream. Black Brew Coffee Shop won with a Chokecherry Lotus and chokecherry cinnamon rolls. Hidden Legend Winery won the commercial beverage class with its Wild Chokecherry Mead and sold from booth 327 in 2026.

The 1999 winner was a North Dakota entrant. Lewistown cowboy poet J.R. Strand described his chokecherry bars to the Spokesman-Review in 2000: “It looked like something that fell out of the south end of northbound dog. It tasted tart. He made the bars from the pit and meat of the chokecherry, ground up and sun dried in the Indian tradition.”

A governor’s visit in 1991

The town’s title dates from 1991. Governor Stan Stephens came to Lewistown that year to see the festival, and, as the Great Falls Tribune tells it, enjoyed it so much that he declared the town the Chokecherry Capital of Montana. The festival’s website carries the title under its name.

The years are counted on the program. The Tribune called the 2016 festival the 27th, and the News-Argus called the 2023 festival the 34th. In 2000 the Spokesman-Review counted about 125 vendors selling jellies, syrups, a chokecherry barbecue sauce, chokecherry soaps, T-shirts and mugs, along with muffins, milkshakes and wine. That year’s festival also had A Taste of Lewistown, which showed off local restaurants’ specialties and drew several thousand visitors. It had a Kid’s Corner that offered babysitting, a Farmers’ Market and a Flower and Garden Show. Lewistown then had about 6,400 people. The Central Montana tourism office now gives 6,208.

Some events have come and gone around the day. The Chokecherry Jam, a street concert on the night before the festival, raised money for Fergus/Petroleum 4-H, the Boys & Girls Club of Lewistown and the Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch. It was not held in 2023. Trails and Ales began in 2014 to mark the opening of Trailhead Park. Craft brewers from around Montana pour samples there for the benefit of the Lewistown Trail System, and tickets for tasting come with a souvenir mug. In 2018 it moved across the street to Creekside Park as its permanent home. For 2026 it moved again, to the Fairgrounds, and ran from five to eight after the festival closed.

Three cherries and a crown

LaFountain calls the chokecherry pit-spitting contest “pretty intense.” Each competitor gets three chokecherries and must eat the fruit before launching each pit. “You get three chances,” he said. “The person to launch the furthest will be crowned.” The winner gets a crown, a cape and prizes, and the contest draws several hundred people. The Enjoy Lewistown site says the longest spitters are crowned king and queen. In 2023 the spitting started at two at booth 325 on Main Street, and the winner was crowned at 4:30.

In 2000 there were two contests, one for accuracy in the morning and one for distance in the afternoon. The reigning king was Guy Maberry, a rancher the Spokesman-Review listed as “5-foot, 17-inch” tall. His 68-foot spit in 1999 beat the former champion, Tom Petranek, by about six feet. Petranek, a diesel mechanic and a good friend of Maberry’s, came back as the challenger. “Last year I spat first, 61 or 62 feet,” he said. “He just about lost his teeth. Then the wind came up his back. I’m only 6-foot-2. At 5 foot, 17 inches, he had the advantage with the wind. This year’s going to be a Guinness World Record event.”

Carol Wicks, a regular spectator, described the field. “Last year’s winner and numerous challengers parade down Main Street, showing quite a bit of camaraderie. Each has a fan club, and, of course, side betting is prolific. The spitters blow up their cheeks like fish, get that wind behind them and spit.” She also described the fruit they had to chew first: “Raw chokecherries taste like a combination of battery acid and burnt cherries.”

Two weeks before the 2026 festival, LaFountain told a reporter about a call the Chamber had received that day. “We literally had someone call us today,” he said. The caller had won the spitting contest during the 1990s and hoped the Chamber still had the photographs.